The Civil RICO Law as the Decisive Weapon in Combating Labour Racketeering

For much of the twentieth century the Italian-American Cosa Nostra organized crime families infiltrated and exploited American unions and those unions' pension and welfare funds. They exercised control by holding top union offices themselves and̸or by exercising influence, even control, over certain union officials. Either way, they drained union treasuries through bloated salaries, no-show jobs, embezzlement, and fraudulent contracts with service providers. They sold out union members' contractual rights in exchange for employers' bribes. They established and policed employer cartels, often smoothing the way for organized crime cronies to take an interest in some of the cartel’s member firms.